Kore
by Alexandra Spar
Summary: Moved from fictionpress.net. Aidon is the pale king of a dead land, alone in his grey mansion; Kore is a child of the harvest, tawny-gold and very much alive. Don't eat the pomegranate seeds.
1. Default Chapter

This is a retelling of two stories at once. I think they meld nicely. Try and imagine a kind of pastoral modern life.

The evening sun was fiery in the sky, pouring redness from its open mouth like wine to spill over the dusky groves and orchards in shadow beneath the deep grey of the mountains. Even the birds had stopped singing to witness the glory of the sinking sun. On the steeps, where the red light lingered longest, I stood and leaned my head on the still-warm trunk of a tree, waiting until the last of the day had winked out behind the western peaks before shouldering my basket of fruit and climbing down into the dusk.

Mother waited for me by the door, her folded arms promising a lecture on the merits of getting home before dark, but her smile took the threat away. "It was particularly good tonight," she said.

"Yes," I said simply. "Deep red, and going on forever, until I could see the stars through it."

Together we carried the basket inside. Mother was experimenting with new ways to preserve fruit; all the available flat surfaces in the house were covered in jars glowing translucently with the gold of apple and the ruby of raspberry, the deep burgundy of bitter cherries and the sunset orange of the apricot. The fruit groves on the mountaintops were if anything more gravid under this weight of harvesting, and I rather wondered which would give out first: my back, from carrying all the raw materiel, or Mother's interest in the subject. "I had another idea today," she told me, as she sorted through the mixed pears and citrons heaping the table. "What about damson and gooseberry?"

"Too sharp," I told her. "Damsons need something sweet to balance them."

"You just like sugar, that's your trouble," she said, laughing. I put my hand on my hip and tried to look affronted.

"Is there anything for dinner, or are we to fast in order to further this obsession with preserves?"

"That depends," she said, "are you going to help me lay the table or stand there making pithy comments all night?"

Mother is beautiful. Really, simply beautiful, with gold hair the color of wheat in the sun and astonishing amber eyes. She is also ageless, which her friends rib her about, but there's something about her that makes them quiet down after a few remarks and look as if they wish they hadn't said anything. I don't know why she never seems to get any older, but in the photographs I have of her in her teens she looks very much the way she does now. Her hair was long and unruly when she was my age; it is long and very well-behaved now. My own hair is not like hers at all, nearly black, with red lights in it when the sun is very strong, and more curly than straight, although it refuses to ringlet nicely. We don't talk about my father. I have never heard his name.

Mother gave up on the citrons, which I thought were rather satisfyingly tart after the surfeit of sweetness we had experienced while she was playing with berries, and led the way into the kitchen. "Bread and cheese and wine and new potatoes boiled with mint," she said, gesturing. I hastened to lay the table for two, thought briefly and produced a small candle. "Where did that come from?" she wanted to know.

"My friend Lana," I said truthfully. "She was making them the other day and thought, Kore might like one. Have we got any matches?"

"In the kitchen drawer," Mother said. "Wasn't that nice of your friend Lana?"

"Lana _is_ nice," I said. "So nice all the young men are crowding round her and offering to take her for rides or give her things or tell her how beautiful she is."

Mother put down the plate she was holding and tipped up my chin so she could look me directly in the eye. "Kore," she said. "Firstly, you are beautiful, no matter what you may think; and secondly, having young men crowd around you and offer you things is a lot more trouble than it's worth. They tend to imagine that you owe them something, and when you don't pay up they get upset, and then they aren't at all nice to be around." Her eyes were faraway; both of us understood that she was no longer speaking about me.

"Yes, well," I said. "The question remains academic. Let's have dinner."

Morning dawned grey and misty and quiet. The work of the small house would not be put off, however, and I went outside in the drizzle to get wood for the fire. Our house has a central fireplace which more or less does away with the need for central heating, and we live in a very temperate climate; nevertheless, the fire is required on mornings such as these, and I am the household woodchopper. Birds sang and somewhere up the mountain a fox barked sharply, in the mists.

I suddenly felt someone watching me. Turning, I looked around in the swirling grey for any sign of a watcher, but there was no one there; I had a fleeting impression of a tall pale figure with dark eyes, but couldn't resolve it from the mist, and when I blinked it was gone. I was suddenly very cold.

I hurried inside. Mother was awake, making tea on the old range. She looked at me, and her face changed suddenly; and for a moment I was not sure I knew the eyes that met mine. "What have you seen," she asked sharply.

"I...was chopping wood outside, and it was misty, and I thought I felt someone watching me, only no one was there. Only...I saw something, but it was gone immediately, and I don't know if it was really there. A pale man. Tall, dark eyes, couldn't really see the face. Wearing something white."

She got up and went to the window, twitched the curtain aside. I had the impression she was looking with something other than her eyes. "It's gone now, whatever it was," she told me, and her voice was calm and believable and her own. "I don't think it's anything to worry about."

Already the sun was beginning to burn off the mist, and when I went back outside there was no terror in the morning. I had forgotten about the watcher by dinnertime, when Lana came by with an invitation.

"There's a party in the village," she said. "Corin and Breghl are having some sort of combined birthday party, and everyone's going. It ought to be fun," and she looked at me with pleading eyes.

"You mean, 'Kore please come so I can tell my mother I'm not going alone', don't you."

"Something like that, yes. Look, Peter's invited me and he says bring friends, and I know Ma won't let me go with him because his hair's too long and he doesn't work..."

"...and he's not wholesome," we finished in unison. Lana's mother was comfortingly predictable. "All right, I'll ask. I'm not promising anything, you understand." She smiled gratefully.

"Thanks, Kore," she said. "What are all these jars, anyway?"

"My mother's new thing: preserving fruit. Though why she should want to preserve the damn stuff when we have it coming out of our ears as it is escapes me."

We both laughed, and ate half a jar of apricots, and Lana explained to me the difficulty in choosing what to wear to such a party. "It's all right for _you_, you've got that innate sort of _style_, anything you put on looks simple and elegant..."

"Everything I _have_ is simple," I said sourly. She frowned at me.

"...but I can never find anything that looks halfway decent, and if I do then my hair will be impossible, and..."

"All right," I said lightly, "I will come to your house and put my ineffable style to work selecting your dress and doing your hair for you and deciding what jewelry you ought to wear, if that will make you happy," and she hugged me tightly and told me I was wonderful. "Have another apricot," I told her. "We have a few."

For all my pretty words I was at a loss what to wear myself, looking through a wardrobe populated mainly with serviceable jeans and plain knitted shirts; my few dresses were all rather elderly, and rather too small. The past year had seen some improvements in my shape; while still far thinner than was considered comely, I had developed breasts and some inkling of hips, and it was apparent that I was if not attractive at least obviously female, which was something. I approached Mother mournfully.

"I've got nothing to wear to the party," I said, standing at the door of her bedroom in my slip. She looked me up and down and appeared to think.

"No, you haven't, have you," she said. "The last time you had a new dress is sometime last year, Galen's christening I think it was. Come in and let me see what I can find you."

"Your clothes aren't going to fit," I said, "you're a lot more curvaceous than I am."

"Try this on," she said, waving a cream-colored garment at me from the depths of her wardrobe. I pulled the dress over my head, afraid I would tear it, but it stretched over my new-found chest with ease. Mother had emerged from the wardrobe, and was looking at me critically. "You need some earrings," she said, and fished around in her jewelry box until she came up with a string of tawny-gold wheatears, cunningly linked together so they seemed to flow seamlessly round the throat, and a pair of earrings to match. With the necklace and the earrings on, I felt more presentable; then she led me to the tall cheval glass in the corner, and showed me myself.

"Not bad, huh," she said, pulling my heavy hair away from my neck, then letting it fall again. "I think your hair needs to be loose for this dress," and she moved away again, letting me see myself.

It was hard to believe that the girl in the mirror was me. She was short, which seemed familiar, and her brows were still lowering over the strange yellow eyes, and her lips were still too wide; but she wore a simple pale dress that clung to her and fell away, showing as she moved the nascent curves beneath it, and dark gold glinted at her throat and ears, and the long dark fall of her hair sparked red under the ceiling light. "Not bad," I repeated, and both of us smiled.

I walked down to Lana's in the dusky light of late afternoon, wearing the dress and my mother's jewelry under a brown coat. She lived in a house smaller than ours, with an old-style thatched roof and roses climbing extravagantly all over the front wall, and diamond-paned windows; there were twice as many people living in a house perhaps half the size of ours, and it still managed to seem cosy rather than cramped. Lana's family had that wonderful ability to welcome any outsiders and make them into de facto family members without difficulty or embarrassment; my mother and I were hermits by comparison.

Lana's younger brother opened the door. "Kore," he said. "You look...different."

"It'll be the dress," I said. "Take a good look; you're unlikely to see me wearing anything this impractical again anytime soon."

"It looks nice," he said simply. I decided not to argue.

"Is Lana around?"

"Yeah, she's upstairs bitching about how she hasn't got anything to wear and it's a tragedy and what is she going to do with her hair, etcetera. _Girls_," he said in gender embarrassment.

"Girls," I agreed, and climbed the stairs to Lana's little room. She was really supposed to share the room with her brother, but after a few years of this it was silently agreed that Davy would live in the attic, which he vastly preferred, and Lana would keep the tiny rose-painted room under the thatch eaves. I knocked, and came in.

Lana's not inconsiderable wardrobe was flung over all available flat surfaces, covering the bed in gauzy folds and heaping her chair with shoes. "Kore," she cried. "Save me."

"Oh, for gods'sake," I said. "Calm down. What seems to be the problem?"

"My blue dress has a stain on it, and I can't find the shoes that go with the gold dress, and anyway one of my earrings has disappeared, and..."

"Show me the blue dress," I said autocratically, folding my arms. She fished around on the bed and came up with a midnight blue gown cut like an ancient Greek chlamys, straight up-and-down but pleated with hundreds of tiny little folds so that it moved with the wearer and seemed to flow like water. "Where's the stain?"

She pointed to a minute area of darker blue on the breast of the gown. "Look, I think it's beetroot juice or something, it won't come out."

"That's the only stain on the dress?" I demanded. She nodded, and I said, "Show me your jewelry." Puzzled, she handed me a small box overflowing with trinkets. I sorted through enamel butterflies and faux pearls, probably the gifts of wellmeaning aunties, since Lana's taste was a little more flamboyant, and came up with a small brushed silver crescent moon pin. "Put on your blue dress and look winsome," I told her, and she pulled the chlamys over her head and regarded me as if I had gone mad. I found the little dark blotch and pinned the crescent moon over it, at a slight angle, and stood back. Amid the myriad folds of midnight blue the little moon glimmered as if it was real, alight in a starless sky.

"Not bad," I said. "Have you got any silver shoes?"

"Yeah, over there on the bed. Do you really think it hides the stain?"

"Look for yourself," I told her, handing her the little mirror half-buried under scarves on the windowsill. She frowned critically.

"It looks all right, especially if I put my hair up," she said, and put the mirror down, and hugged me. "Thank you, thank you, thank you, darling Kore, you've saved my life..." She pulled back and seemed to see what I was wearing for the first time. "Turn around," she told me.

I let the brown coat slip from my shoulders and turned slowly, feeling foolish. Lana squeaked. "You look fantastic!" she said, "I haven't seen that dress before, and you never ever let your hair down, and where did that amazing necklace come from?"

"My mother," I told her. "As I said to Davy, enjoy it while you can, because all this splendor is going to be a one-night thing. When does the party start, by the way?"

"Oh, sometime soon," she said airily. "You think the silver shoes not the dark blue ones with this?"

We walked down the rose-fragrant lane resplendent in our finery, feeling like queens and silly little girls at the same time. Lana far outshone me, of course; she was Artemis, and I was....Kore. A strange name, and one my mother had never explained to me, but not at all glamorous. Lana's corn-gold hair was piled on top of her head artlessly, with tendrils escaping here and there, and her lips were stained with dark wine-berry gloss; I wore no makeup, and my long hair was heavy about my shoulders and neck. We made a strange pair, I thought suddenly.

Lana's current boyfriend Peter was waiting at the bottom of the lane. "Took you long enough," he said, and kissed her familiarly; I tried not to watch. He noticed me trying not to watch, and was kind enough to say nothing, and my heart warmed towards him. "Come on, the party's begun already," and he opened the door of his car for her. I crept in the back seat, quiet and very much aware of the fact that I was not really supposed to be there. Peter gunned the engine and we sped away, down into the village alight with evening lamps and already humming with music.

I felt again the sensation of being watched as the car bore us down the long hill into the village proper, and turned to look through the back window. I was just in time to see the figure of a man, clearly a man dressed in white, standing by the side of the road and following us with his eyes; as I watched he turned and loped away silently into the shadows of the hedge. I shivered and wrapped my coat more closely around me, aware that I should not be seeing the things I saw.

Aidon watched the car, with the girl's white face visible through the back window, disappear down the hill. He turned back into the shadows, furious with himself; he had been seen twice now, and on the same day. He must be getting soft.

He had watched Kore for about a month, in the early hours when she was chopping wood or on her way to school or the shops; he had been careful to keep out of sight, and there had been only one nasty moment when she had looked directly at him, and he was forced to slip out of human sight until she looked away again. By rights even that should not have saved him; if she was what he believed her to be, human sight was not the limit of her visual powers. He could only assume that she was so used to human limitations, perhaps she had never known anything else, that they seemed natural to her now. He knew he had frightened her this past morning, and again when she looked back to see him watching her.

He cursed himself silently. There was no reason for it, he told himself; one does not, simply does not, stalk attractive girls. It just isn't done. And she was attractive, he could not deny it, in a strange bone-shaking sort of way; he had seen that sort of beauty only once before, when he had watched Ceres harvesting apples back on the mountain, in the very old days. Like mother, like daughter, he thought dryly. None of this helps _me_.

What am I supposed to do? he demanded of the late rose, which hung its heads all over the hedgerow and exuded perfume in a blameless sort of way. What am I supposed to do?

Go home, the rose said sniffily. You don't belong here, and you're upsetting her.

I know, and I'm sorry for it, but...

But nothing. Go home, Aidoneus. Your place is not here, and hers is.

What do _you_ know, he demanded. You're a flower. Or were you a nymph back when the boss was going through his nymph phase, and you got turned into a flower because you said no?

Hah, said the rose. Shows how much you know. I'm Persian.

Persian, he repeated. Then you know about love.

I should think so too, it retorted. The red rose is one of the symbols of love.

And the white?

Depends what country we're in. Can mean mourning; can mean purity, can mean a host of other things.

Death?

Maybe, it said. I think that's black. And anyway, you're not Death.

No, he said. I'm not.

You're not doing anyone any good, you know, the rose told him. You're making her frightened, and the edges of this world a little too friable for their own good, and you're going to make yourself ill if you don't go home soon. Your country's suffering.

I know, he said miserably. I know, it's just...

You're besotted with a girl you don't know, it finished for him. He stiffened, and in a sudden access of anger reached out and snapped one of the white rose blossoms from its stem.

Succinct, he said coldly, and made a strange gesture in the air with one hand, and was just as suddenly gone; there was nothing to mark where he had been save a brown and dried-up rose petal, long dead and gone to dust.


	2. 2

The party was nothing special. I hadn't expected it to be: as always I sat silently in the corner and looked at the beautiful people around me, pretending I could maybe have been one of them, if there had been a little less of my father in me, more of my mother. That line of thought threatened tears, after a while, and I gave up and addressed myself to the punch.

I was aware that it was alcoholic; I was unaware exactly how alcoholic it was until I got up and realized I couldn't walk exactly straight. There was a strange humming in the room, and for a moment I was unsure if I was asleep or awake: the world was swaying around me. I cursed myself for an ignorant little girl, and sat as still as I could and tried not to look drunk. Someone called to me, took my hand, and I was dancing suddenly; and it was fun, it was interesting, it was something I hadn't ever enjoyed before. Arms were around me, someone's hands were on my waist. I saw only a shifting flesh-colored blur, dark eyes, an open mouth, laughing.

I don't know how long it was before the music ended, and I found myself outside. Then it was darker around us, and cool, and the hands that had been on my waist moved to my breasts, and then downward, and downward, and I wriggled and tried to pull away, but the arms around me were too strong. I think some of the alcohol was driven from my brain by the shock of fear and sudden wrongness, but I don't know whether what I remember was real or dreamed. The boy who was involved with removing my mother's dress from my suddenly very innocent body was jerked away from me, harshly, and I heard something rip, and found time to wonder: What am I going to tell her tonight, when she asks me what happened.....and then there was a pale face over my own, and cool pale hands touched my face, my lips, so gently I can't remember if I really felt them; and then there was nothing in the world but blackness, and voices rapidly fading away.

Aidon sat tiredly in the warmth of the kitchen, one hand to his face, the other curled around a small glass of clear liquid on the table. His black coat hung over the back of the chair, his white hair fell limply over his white brow. Ceres stood with her arms folded and an expression of deep mistrust on her face; mistrust, and something older, and more sorrowful.

"I think she saw me," he said at length, tapered fingers rubbing his eye sockets. "I'm almost sure she did."

"I don't understand any of this," Ceres said. "Why did you come back? Why now? and what are you doing here in the first place? I haven't heard of any conclaves or meetings. He's not been in touch."

"I....happened to be in the neighborhood," he said. He coughed, a little, very lightly; just a shaking of the shoulders, a catch in each breath. Ceres regarded him without sympathy.

"You're falling apart," she told him. "You oughtn't to be here anyway. I have to thank you for saving my daughter's honor, but I can't imagine what else you have to do on this particular plane."

"What about you?" Aidon asked, looking up. She saw how deadly tired he was, how the strain of physically existing in the kitchen was dragging at him. "What is it to you, to live here? Why do you remain? Your own kingdom must be suffering too."

"My _realm_," she said, stressing the word, "is here. Right here, on the mountain. I am everywhere, as I am here, and you are not. That at least he granted me before he let me go."

Her voice dripped with bitterness. Aidon drained his glass, stood shakily. "Ceres, I'm....sorry, about all of this. I can't say how sorry I am."

"I know," she told him. "I do know. But that changes nothing."

He looked at her beseechingly and in his face she saw his brother suddenly; so suddenly it made her feel almost ill. Then he was gone, his shadow fading from the terracotta tiles as he and his black coat disappeared from view.

Ceres looked down at her sleeping daughter. Kore was going to feel ill enough in the morning, she thought, quite apart from the lecture she herself was preparing to give her; but she couldn't help feeling infuriated. Most of the fury was not for Kore herself; it was for Aidon, and the past that he had so neatly brought stirring up like mud into her brilliantly clear and self-organized life. Life, again, was the wrong word.

She sighed, walked back downstairs into the kitchen, looked at the chair where her brother had sat. So long ago she had been just a girl by their standards, he had looked down at her with ineffable snobbery down the length of his long white nose. "You're so _good_," he had said. "So _good_. I can't bear you."

Aidon, she thought, why did you have to come back? Why do you have to be here now, now when I can least afford you, now when the world is drawing very near to something critical and all my strength must be focused on that which is for others' good? Damn you.

As if he stood in front of her once more, she heard his dry, sardonic voice. "Already done, dear sister. Already done."

Aidon lay on a great black-upholstered couch, feeling a little better now that he was back where he belonged, but not much. His sister's golden eyes burned into his mind, and her bitterness, her refusal to comprehend what he might be saying to her, cut him to the bone. He could understand, of course. He could understand precisely, exactly, what she was thinking, and why, and he could still not escape from what he felt. That was, he reflected, why it was so particularly awful: because he himself knew how bad it was. He couldn't erase the way Kore's black hair with its glints of red had lain scattered like silk over her body, when he had pulled the lout off her and explained to him the error of his ways. It had been color, in a world which for him was almost entirely monochrome. Her hair and her eyes were notes of color which to him were the more brilliant for their dull surroundings, for the flat white and black greyness of the world in which she moved.

He looked out of his windows. The room was done in black, all black; a morning room, with an obsidian fireplace, black silken couches, ebony floorboards, black carpeting, black candles in the chandeliers. Black appealed to Aidon: there was something clean about it, something peaceful and forgettable. He had had most of the mansion done in black, except for the one red room down below the ground level, the room that he went into very seldom, and referred to hardly ever.

He coughed again, a little less now, as the strength of his realm found his body again and began to flow back into him. His white minions swayed and danced with the force of their own passage, slow and forceful, slow and forceful by turns, on their weary way along the dark roads of his world. Black poplars shed their leaves in the eternal dusk of the underworld.

Outside his mansion, rain began to fall.

I woke, cold. Cold, and sick, and my head pounded, and the room was yellow-grey with dawn light. I couldn't remember anything. There had been a party, some kind of party, and I had worn a pale gown.....

It struck me with blinding force. Oh Gods, there had been a boy, and the cream dress had been ripped, and what had happened after the rip? what had happened to me? I cursed myself, struggling to my feet. Mother was standing in the doorway, arms folded, an expression of barely-concealed annoyance on her face.

"I hope you're satisfied with yourself?" she asked me. I passed a hand over my face.

"I loathe myself," I confessed. "What happened?"

"From what I gathered, you drank enough to disgrace yourself in front of your friends, and managed to get yourself in a situation which could have got you pregnant or dead had not someone come to your rescue. Do you remember anything at all?"

"Only....dancing, and then it wasn't dancing anymore but something worse, and someone ripped the dress I was wearing....and I was so afraid...and then it all went away. Someone came and made it all go away."

"Yes," she said simply. "You were lucky. Kore, do not ever, ever do anything like that again."

"I won't," I assured her. "Who saved me?"

She didn't reply immediately. "I don't know," she said after a minute. "I don't know. Just...go and wash yourself, and then stay in your room for the rest of the day. I don't want to see or hear you until dinnertime."

"Right," I said automatically. One does not argue with Mother when she gets that particular look in her eyes. Only I knew she had been lying. She had known very well who had saved my honor and quite possibly my life.

I know very little about my mother, I realized. I hardly know who she is, really; I don't know what she did before I was around, or what her secrets are, or who she dreams about at night, or who she is thinking of when I hear her crying quietly after dark sometimes, when she is sure she is alone. I don't know.

I sat back down on the bed and thought about my mother. She is old and she is young, and there are times when I am sure she is remembering another place and another time, and another face before her own; not mine. The pale man I have seen twice now is something to do with that other time, I know, but she would never vouchsafe information about her past to me; that is not the way things are.

After a while I felt steady enough to get up. The cream dress had vanished; I wasn't sure I wanted to know what had happened to it. Shame so thick and sickening it was almost palpable overwhelmed me at the thought of what I had done. I had been so pretty, so....

_(beautiful)_

presentable, that night. I had looked almost as I wanted to look, and I had expected a wholly different outcome to the evening. I wasn't exactly sure what that outcome was, but it was a far cry from narrowly-averted rape. My breasts poked assertively against the thin fabric of the shirt I wore. I decided I didn't want to think about them, nor any other part of my body, and went into the adjoining room to draw a bath.

This small domestic ceremony had always made me feel good. There was something of luxury in lying chin-deep in hot fragrant water, something I didn't have much in my life. Now, sitting on the edge of the ancient clawfooted tub, watching steam rise like smoke from the rushing water, it felt more like a purification. Over and over I felt those half-dreamed hands touch my lips, my eyelids, my hair; a touch so faint and gentle I must have imagined it. I almost thought I remembered to whom those hands belonged, but just as I was about to bring the face into my mind it slipped away into mist.

Mist rising from hot water.

I opened the sink cabinet and selected a bottle of bath crystals, glittering and deep blue as sapphires in the warm peach-colored light, and shook a handful into the water. Watching them dissolve was like watching tears falling into water; they shimmered and swirled and faded into nothingness, and it was as if they had never been.

I realized I was crying all of a sudden. Hot painless tears overflowed and ran softly, slowly, down my cheeks, fell in crystal showers into the steam-obscured water. I turned off the tap, pulled my shirt over my head and stepped, gasping at the sudden heat, into the bath.


	3. 3

Aidon jerked out of an uneasy sleep to find something unfamiliar and unpleasant itching in his mind. Staring with unfocused dark eyes into the dimness of his throne room, he searched for the source of the sensation, and was not really surprised when he found what it was.

Kore was crying. She had wept before, of course, countless times, but this time the tears that flowed hotly from her closed lids and diffused into the steaming bathwater were wrung from a deeper part of her. He knew suddenly that it was because of him. At least partly because of him. He didn't realize he had clenched his hands so tight that his pale nails had cut half-moons into his palms.

Forcing his breathing to slow, Aidon allowed his awareness of her to fill his world, blotting out the darkness of the throne room, the cold stone beneath his hands, the faint scent of bitter herbs. There was nothing but Kore, and it seemed there never had been.

She lay still as the dead in the bathtub, her dark hair gleaming and moving gently like seaweed under the surface, her long lashes forming perfect French curves on her pale skin, jeweled with the tears she could not stop. Aidon, as gently as his desperation would allow, reached a little further and touched her mind.

She was desperately ashamed. That much was obvious. Ashamed, and in some part of her deeply dissatisfied with her relationship with her mother. Aidon rather thought that Kore and Ceres had never really understood one another; he knew Ceres of old, of course, and knew how she thought. Kore was more immediate, more emotional, more spontaneous, than her mother.

He caught the edge of a stray thought as it drifted out of her awareness. This time it was his lip he didn't feel as he bit deep enough to bring slow dark blood. _She remembered his touch._

More than remembered; she had felt pleasure from his touch.

Aidon pulled back, remembering vaguely to breathe. His world was suddenly a lot bigger and brighter. He knew that it meant precisely nothing: he had no hold over her, he was nothing more than a pleasant dream to her, but even that small amount of hope was almost unbearable. Struggling to remain calm, he explained to himself that he would ignore her, and go out to discharge his responsibilities (sadly neglected during the past few days) to his realm. But the part of him that was old and original and not a little similar to his brother had grown suddenly more powerful, and he remained in his obsidian throne, unaware of the crystal tears that trembled on his own eyelashes.

I began to feel the bathwater cooling. My skin was pale and soft and wrinkled, my eyes hot and red and scratchy. I stood up, sheeting water like a plain naiad, and bent over to wring the water out of my hair. I caught sight of myself in the steamy mirror, and a sound that was half a laugh and half a sob came out of me. I looked like a madwoman; my face was death-white, my eyes big and dark and red-rimmed, my hair clinging in black straggles to my forehead.

Turning away from the unpleasant sight, I wrapped myself in the robe hanging on the back of the door. I had no intention of facing Mother, at least not until the evening, and I saw no reason to put clothes on.

My room was cold after the steam of the bathroom. I flung myself on the bed, aware that there were no more tears to come (and besides, crying was childish and silly) and curled up in a ball, waiting for the day to be over.

Aidon's older self remembered standing there on the steps of the palace, looking down at his brother. Zeus had been driving the MGB that day, he recalled; freshly washed and waxed, it gleamed like a dark green chariot on the gravel drive. The woman beside him was blonde and gorgeous, as all Zeus's women were. Aidon knew that if he turned to look up at the great third-floor windows he'd see the pale face of the Queen watching her husband absently fingering the blonde girl's hair.

Zeus had looked up at his brother, laughing amusedly at Aidon's raised eyebrow. "We're not like them," he had said. "When we want something, we take it. That is how it always has been."

"Is it right?" Aidon had asked mildly. Zeus's grin widened.

"Right and wrong are terms _they_ made up. We are above such trivialities. Aidon, you really need to lighten up. You never have any fun."

He had put the MGB in gear and driven off with his mortal squeeze, the wheels kicking up a cloud of dust that obscured the car as it disappeared through the gates.

Aidon had watched until the dust cleared, thinking over what the King had said. _When we want something, we take it._

He came back to himself with a jolt.

_We take it._

I was almost asleep. The warmth of the water had driven some of the thudding ache from my skull. Lying curled up on my bed, I was almost able to forget the previous night. My mind was running along familiar, well-worn tracks: a fantasy I'd had ever since I was a child, wherein I was driving a long low black car, and a man sat beside me in silence. I had never been able to see the man's face.

Somewhere a door opened and closed. My mother, probably. I could hear footsteps a long way away. I yawned, and suddenly I was more tired than I could ever remember being. The man and the car disappeared, replaced by a sense of falling under the surface of some dark water. I had time to wonder vaguely what was happening to me before everything went black.

Aidon gathered Kore's slender form in his arms. The voice of Zeus was strong in his head, almost eclipsing his rational side, which shrieked _What are you doing? What the hells do you think you're doing?_

I'm exercising my divine prerogative, he thought half-hysterically. Kore's body was lighter than he'd expected, and in her spelled sleep she shifted a little in his arms, and one of her hands closed gently on his shirt. He shivered suddenly, took a deep breath, marshalling his energies, and took her away.

The simple cottage room faded in a blink of his smoke-colored eyes, and another room, much larger, materialized. He laid Kore on a bed hung with pale grey silk brocade, the canopy held up by intricately carved ebony posts. The room firmed around him as he turned more of his attention to it.

She clung to his shirt as he laid her down, and something almost unbearable turned over in his heart. Again he heard his brother's voice, and this time it gave him a little strength. He laid her hands by her sides, covered her with the sheets. Without taking his eyes from her he waved a hand at the marble sideboard, which suddenly groaned under the weight of a magnificently luxurious assortment of fruit, confections, cheese, breads and crackers, wines and juices in crystal decanters. Another wave of the hand created a wardrobe filled to capacity with exquisite dresses; yet another made a section of the wall waver and disappear to reveal a well-appointed bath suite. The balcony outside the great windows was barren, he noticed, and as he noticed it flowering trees popped into existence, standing in china tubs along the railing of the terrace. He raised his head and looked fixedly at the wall opposite the bed, which developed a fireplace complete with crackling logs and gleaming brass poker, and then directed his attention to the far wall. A bookcase built itself out of the air, stocking itself as it went with books of the sort he'd seen on Kore's own shelves: _Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, Magic Flutes, Brave New World, Storm Warning, Paradise Lost._

He looked down again at Kore's sleeping face. She would take at least another hour to come out of the slumber he'd cast upon her, and although he wanted nothing more than to wait here with her until those long, long lashes parted, his realm was calling to him with more urgency every minute.

Ceres, sitting in her warm and earth-colored kitchen, watched as the day's light faded from the sky. Kore had been punished enough, she thought. The look in her dark daughter's eyes had told her that morning that she fully realized exactly what she'd done, and was deathly frightened and ashamed.

She got up from the table. Try as she might, she couldn't rid herself of the memory of Aidon sitting in that very chair, looking suddenly very young. He had looked so like his brother, then. So very much.

Unwillingly, Ceres allowed herself to remember the King. Smooth and dark-golden and thickly muscled, he had seemed the very embodiment of the statues made to him in the old days of marble and olives; his wide grin had opened the world for her, back then, the touch of his strong square hands had given her a reason to exist. There had been peace in heaven, at least for a while. And then there had been Juno, and in Juno everything changed.

Ceres had withdrawn, taking refuge in the golden wheatears and the swelling fruits of her realm, already feeling the quickening of the child inside her. Summer never ended. The harvests were gathered in the same golden glow of warmth that heralded the sowing of the seeds. The baby had been born in the flowering of the late rose, and Ceres had looked at the beauty of her leonine eyes and the down of dark hair on her finely shaped skull, and had felt the name _Persephone_ rise in her mind like the upwelling of a spring.

Persephone she had been, until the day when she had seen one of the stylized pale statues of girls that stood in the marble temples of their world, and had asked her mother what they were called. Ceres remembered looking down at Persephone's five-year-old face, upturned and curious, and had seen a shadow pass across her daughter's golden eyes as she told her "That is a _kore_."

Persephone, always a dutiful and obedient child, grew to hate her name as the years passed. At thirteen, red-faced with crying over the latest disappointment, she had blurted out, "I want to change my name." Ceres had raised a wheat-gold eyebrow and asked what she would like to be called. "Kore. Like those statues. I want my name to be Kore."

Years passed. Ceres didn't think she'd ever really forgotten the shock of surprise and hurt that had flooded through her at Kore's rejection of her rightful name. Sometimes she could feel it like an invisible wall between them, a barrier as complete and absolute as the one she had tried to place between herself and Zeus, all those years ago. Yet there had never been a conversation about it, never had they spoken of that particular disagreement.

Restlessly, Ceres rose, pushing in her chair, and climbed the stairs to her daughter's room.


	4. 4

I woke out of the soundest and most emptily dreamless sleep I'd ever experienced. The last thing I could clearly remember was letting hot blinding tears fall into water so hot it hurt my skin, and curling up on my bed with the heaviness of my wet hair weighing on my neck. This was not my bed, I realized as I stared upwards at what appeared to be a canopy, grey figured shimmery material like silk; I was enclosed in curtains, there were dark carven poles at the corners of the bed.

Ah, I thought wisely, I must still be asleep, because this is a dream. Somewhere inside me I was aware of the possibility that it wasn't a dream, but it was distant enough to let me remain content with the fantasy of my surroundings.

I uncurled myself. The bed I lay on was soft and warm, the grey material of the sheets—I was pretty sure it was silk, and began to enjoy the dream—smooth and sweet beneath my skin. There were at least four pillows, which represented immeasurable luxury for a girl who was used to sleeping with one pillow if she was lucky.

I wasn't tired; my headache had gone, the distant sick feeling in my stomach and throat had dissipated with the headache. I felt better than I had in days, in fact. I threw back the covers of the dream-bed and slithered out through a gap in the curtains.

My mind had never furnished me with a dream this complex and detailed. That part of me which was more and more aware that this was dangerously real shifted and turned over in my skull, but with the single-minded assurance of the very young I ignored it. The room in which I had woken was enormous; the floorplan of my mother's house would easily have fit within its space without scraping the ceiling or touching the walls. Great floor-to-ceiling windows filled one wall, arched at the top; their bottom quarters would open to give onto a balcony. Everything was in shades of grey; palest pearl to darkest Payne's grey, the room gave the impression of the interior of a soft-furred pussy willow bud. I could see the curve of a bathtub through a connecting door, and a wardrobe stood in the corner. A fireplace complete with fire sat across from the bed; one wall possessed a grey marble sidetable heaped and covered with food.

At the sight of that bounty, my stomach awoke and began to make impolite noises. I thought vaguely that dream-food couldn't possibly be bad for you, because it wasn't real, and wandered over to the banquet set out by an unseen hand. There were pomegranates, which for some reason I had a deep craving for, and there were golden breadloaves and grapes like heaping piles of amethyst, and crystal phials of fantastically jewel-clear liquids. I reached for a pomegranate.

Something like a thunderclap went off in my head. For a moment the world went utterly black, and howlingly loud, and I could neither feel nor hear nor see anything. I floated in a void, and then there was a voice, quiet and deadly cold, and it spoke to me, and it said, _Your name is Persephone, girl. Your name is Persephone. You will stay here forever if you taste of that fruit. Of any of Hades' fruit. You do not belong here._

Hades? I thought suddenly, my blood feeling shockingly cold in my veins. But this is a dream. Isn't it?

That part of my mind which had been yelling at me ever since I had drifted out of slumber in the great grey bed suddenly shrieked. _Yes, Hades. Hades. Hades. You're in Hades. Look around you. It's all dead. All of it is dead, Kore, and you're going to be dead too if you don't get out of here right now._

I opened my eyes and found that my fingers had stopped short of touching the pomegranate's fragrant skin. My hunger muttered within me, closing a fist that I couldn't ignore for long. I pulled back my hand and pinched myself sharply in the soft flesh of my upper left arm; pain arrowed up my neck into my skull, but the grey room didn't shimmer and dissolve. I ran to the great windows, beyond which I could dimly see through sheeting rain the edge of a range of black hills, on which dark poplars grew. The glass was cold and solid beneath my fingers. It was real. I knew that if I swung my hand at the glass as hard as I could that it would shatter, and that the glass would enter my flesh, and that the blood that would flow, bright and too red in the grey light of the room, would be real.

I put my hands, suddenly hot, to the cool glass, and let my forehead fall to rest against the surface of the window. It was real. I was in the domain of Hades. Aidoneus. The Rich.

I don't know how long I remained there, my eyes closed, deeply aware of the bone-cold of the windows and the deep unwillingness to believe what I needed to believe. At length I became aware that someone was watching me; that I was no longer alone in the great grey room with the bed and the fireplace and the pomegranates like pouches full of rubies.

Slowly I turned my head. He was standing in the doorway, leaning against it as if exhausted, impossibly tall. His face was not unfamiliar, and after a moment I knew why; because I had seen him before, regarding me silently amidst the mist of morning, and standing by the side of the road as my friend's lover drove us down the hill. The man with the white hair and the dark eyes, the man who wore black, the man who never spoke to me, merely watched me, with eyes so dark I couldn't really see them, beneath arched dark brows, veiled by the fall of snowy hair.

"Hello," he said, rather embarrassedly. "Er. Welcome."

"Why am I here?" I said thickly through the tears. Something akin to pain flickered across his features. He made as if to come forward into the room, and thought better of it.

"I don't know how to explain this," he began. I sank to my knees, slithering down the coldness of the window.

"You stole me, didn't you," I said to the floor, thinking of the boy at the party, the strength of him, the dreadful inexorable will, the hands on my body. "You stole me."

"Yes," he said, not looking at me. There was nothing of strength in his voice at all. I raised my eyes to his face.

"Well," I said. "Let's get it over with." I got shakily to my feet and made my way to the bed, sinking down on its edge with a gruesome parody of an alluring smile. He frowned, not understanding, and then comprehension flashed into his face, and horror followed fast behind. I allowed the hem of my robe to slither off my shoulder.

"Gaea, no," he said, appalled. "No, Kore, I would never....I don't....I..." He disengaged himself from the doorway and crossed the room in three or four quick strides, to stand beside me at the bed's edge. I closed my eyes in anticipation as his icy fingers neared my flesh, but his touch was warm and soft, and I felt him gently pull the robe back over the curve of my shoulder. "Kore," he said as quietly as possible, "I'm not good at this sort of thing. I....love you, you see, and I am dying for you. I will die if you leave me; I have been dying this past many months because I have only been able to see you in the temporal world, which drains me of what strength I have. I would never touch you...like that. The boy at the party....."

"That was you," I said quietly, realizing. "You pulled him off me."

"I had to," he said with an edge of desperation. "I couldn't let him do you like a cheap whore. Not you, Kore; not any girl, but especially not you. I've loved you for a very long time now."

"Who are you?" I raised eyes that were no longer terrified but almost angry to his face. He was so pale, like a man made out of snow, the shadows beneath his cheekbones blue, his eyes sunk deep in darkness. "Who the bloody hells are you? Why are you doing this to me?"

"My name is..." he began, and stopped. "Call me Aidon. It's as accurate as any other."

_Aidon_, I thought. _Aidoneus. Hades._

"You're _him_?" I demanded. "Hades? Lord of the Underworld? The King of the Dead?"

He nodded, shamefacedly.

"Oh, shit," I said, furious. Shocked, of course, but furious. I had never believed in Hades, any more than I'd ever really believed in Zeus; but presumably unless this man was a very rich nut, he was probably who he said he was. "Shit. You scare the living hell out of me by materializing out of nowhere and watching me, then you steal me from my own room and expect me to stay here in this bloody grey mansion all alone with you because you have a crush on me? And if you're who you say you are, oughtn't you to be ruling your domain rather than mooning after some ugly teenage girl?"

He was quiet, for a long time. I kept my gaze steady on his face, and he would not meet my eyes; rather, he withdrew his hand and rose, swaying a little, and walked silently to the door.

"Are you going to let me go?"

"I'm afraid I can't," he said. "If I let you go, I will die."

"You're a god," I said acidly. "You can't."

"You're a god too, you know," he said. "It is possible for us to die."

"What?" I demanded. But he was already gone, his black shadow fading as the mass that cast it faded. I got up, my head swimming with shock and fear and anger, and ran to where he had been, but there was nothing in the doorway except a single white rose.

Two hours later, I had bathed and dressed in the least ridiculous of the gowns I had found in the wardrobe: a pale cream shift with a few aquamarines and sapphires strewn at the neck and hem. The grey silk sheets from the bed were tied together in a long rope with the bedcurtains and the most sturdy of the cloaks, knotted firmly around the stone parapet of the balcony outside the great windows. Rain still lashed the side of the mansion. I took a deep breath and closed the window behind me, beginning the long climb down to the ground.

Wet silk, I discovered, was extremely slippery. It was all I could do not to slither down my makeshift rope like a bead down a string and end up spread all over the marble terrace beneath me. When I finally reached the bottom, more or less intact, I was faced with a larger and perhaps more dangerous challenge: how the bloody hell to get out of Hades?

This must be the fields of asphodel, I thought absently. It certainly wasn't Elysium; no sunlight beamed down on the happy ghosts of brave warriors. No lava was currently falling from the skies, either, which sort of ruled out Tartarus. It was all just grey. Dark and soft and grey, like a new puppy's ear, only not half so charming.

I untied the bottom cloak and wrapped myself in it. From here there was only one way to go: down. Great marble flights of steps curled away to the poplar-covered plain below.

The rain was grey. It was colored. I noticed it when I raised a hand to push sodden hair from my face and saw it glistening and running with greyness. Every damn thing about this place was grey. More than ever I wanted Mother and our comfortable little house where everything was warm and crudely made and full of the essence of living things. Here nothing was alive, except perhaps myself. I hurried down the steps, reaching the plain at last. There was a sort of avenue cut through the poplars, and I followed it, making good speed despite the weather, because there was no mud. There was grey moss on the ground which appeared to soak up the worst of the rain.

I began to wonder if there was nothing but wet grey plains in Hades. It seemed remarkably likely. When I looked back I could no longer see the marble palace; dark poplar trunks encircled me. It was as if the palace had never been. I looked ahead, and the same poplar trunks stretched as far as the eye could see.

Oh, well, I thought. Better to be trying to escape than lying on that (_comfortable_) bed and eating fruit and reading novels, in the house of an insane god. Yes. Much better.

What had he meant? I wasn't a god, I was merely the daughter of Ceriss the wisewoman. There had never been any mention of divine influence in my background. I was merely

(_Persephone_)

Kore.

I forged ahead, the sodden hem of my cloak dragging horribly on the wet ground. Hunger closed an insistent fist inside me, and although I tried to ignore it, I knew by the shaking of my hands and the vague lightness of my head that I'd have to eat soon. I was aware that there was no lightening in the steel-colored sky ahead, nor in any direction; there was no indication that there ever would be. This was perhaps not the best idea I'd ever had, I thought distantly. Damn it.

An hour or maybe three later, my heart shivered with surprise as I saw a glimmer of light in the distance ahead of me. Barely perceptible, it limned the edges of the poplar trunks and brought a surge of hope into the back of my throat. I began to hurry, gathering up my soaking skirts, trotting through the wet forest. Grey rain still fell, veiling the source of the light from me, plastering my gown and my hair to my skin. I was cold; my fingers were stiff and white, clutching the folds of heavy cloth with numb desperation. Still something of dream floated through my perception of this place; I didn't really feel as if this was _me_ struggling through a poplar forest under a steel-grey sky, escaping from someone I didn't believe existed.

The light was growing brighter, casting a sort of black rainbow in the wet air; silvery-grey spectral colors drifted above my head. I thought vaguely _How beautiful_, without slowing my pace. Something told me that if I stopped to look at it, I might never escape this world. I hurried onwards, pushing through the forest. Another hour must have passed before I found myself standing at the top of a steep incline.

The light, a faint pearl-grey, was gleaming through the cracks beneath a pair of great carven gates. The gates reached up into the drifting clouds, beyond the reach of my sight; they were flanked by a wall of shifting grey mist that I just knew was more solid that it looked. The light flickered and played beneath the gates, cutting in long sweet blades through the wet air. I breathed deeply, tasting the bitterness of the grey rain in the back of my throat, before beginning the slippery descent to the plain below, and the gates.

They were made of horn, or something. Carved horn, smooth and slightly warm to the touch. The carvings seemed to writhe and twist as I looked at them, and after a moment I found myself not trying to follow those movements; they were not meant to be seen. The gates had no handles or knobs. I looked around for some clue as to how to get through; finding none, I simply set my hands to the pale gold-grey surface and pushed.

Nothing happened. I thrust my shoulder at the gates, and they didn't budge. Moving back a few steps, I ran at them and managed to nearly knock myself out; it was like running into a stone wall. It was impossible. The gates remained as solid as the rock beneath my feet; the light dripping from between them seemed to glow brighter every time I threw myself against the unyielding surface, mocking me.

I had never been locked inside anywhere in my life. When I was a baby I had been allowed to wander freely in the gardens while my mother worked; growing up, she had always explained dangers to me and allowed me to explore the limitations of my world. Now, as I pounded ineffectively against the smooth carved gates, something frantic and new overtook me; I _couldn't get out_, I was trapped here, I was a prisoner, I was suffocating in the constant rain. I threw myself against the gates, my vision suffused with the impossible motion of the carven dragons' heads and inhuman faces that swirled beneath my fingers. I scrabbled at them, begging them aloud to let me through, let me through, until the pale gates were stained with my blood, and my world was shivering and shaking around me. I don't remember what happened then; there was just a great roaring in my ears, and the gates seemed to be running away from me down a long tunnel, and I slid away from them, down into darkness.


	5. 5

For the second time, Aidon looked down at her sleeping face, guilt and sorrow bitter as ashes in his throat. Her hands lay bandaged in snowy linen on the coverlet, her face empty and very young in the depths of her sleep.

He had held her in his arms, for a moment, when the world had stopped for him; when he had found her lying bloody and unconscious at the foot of the Gates of Horn. She had tied her bedclothes together in the time-honored fashion of the lady escaping from durance vile, and had forged her way across the grey woods to the Gates. He had been impressed with her fortitude; he was struck to the heart, although not entirely surprised, to find that she had removed each of the petals of the white rose before snapping its stem and leaving the remains on the silken coverlet. The scent of roses hung heavy in the air.

Aidon remembered Zeus again, strong and golden as he was thin and pale, standing with him on the balcony of Olympus Heights, drinking something purple with an umbrella in it. They had been watching the small shapely forms of some of Zeus's nymphs disporting themselves in the tennis courts below. He remembered it perfectly; the heat of Helios on their shoulders, the warm roughness of the stone beneath their hands. "How do you do it?" he had asked.

"Do what?" the King had said, distantly, his eyes fixed on one particular pert white-clad behind.

"Get them. I mean, you just sort of swoop down on them and grab them around the waist. How do you get them to stop thinking of you as a marauder and start loving you? Or at least willing to submit to your carnal desires?"

Zeus had looked at him, one golden eyebrow raised. "You don't give them a choice. They like the force. At least most of them do; and when they don't, you just have to compliment them and say their beauty just seized you. You've got to be confident."

He had turned back to the tennis nymphs, shaking his head. He couldn't imagine that kind of relationship; in fact, he had never imagined any sort of relationship, because his life had mostly consisted of the ruling of his domain. No one had ever captivated him; although the nymphs were undeniably attractive, he felt no compulsion to snatch one and have his way with her.

He sighed, returning to the present, and canceled the grey rainstorm with a wave of his hand. The weather here followed his mood, more or less, but he could influence it directly. Once he stopped concentrating on it, the rain would start again. He wouldn't be surprised if there was hail in it.

What he had said to her was true. He was dying; he would die, would wither and fall to ashes, without her; if he let her go, he would be letting himself go with her. Yet she loathed him. She would batter her flesh until it bled to get away from him and his domain. It was not something Aidon was good at dealing with. Zeus, Aidon knew, had never really been in love.

He rose, restlessly, paced to the window. Already the grey rain was drizzling its way over the poplars from the north, where Lethe flowed pale and sweet and soporific; it carried a little of Lethe in every drop, and he was almost glad for the numbing effect. There were things he had to do.

I drifted out of emptiness into a grey room that was horribly familiar. For a moment I thought my entire failed escape had been nothing more than a dream; then I moved, and a stab of pain in my abused hands told me otherwise. Nothing had changed. I lay in the great grey bed, remade with fresh sheets; while the scent of roses remained in the air like an invisible smoke, the debris of his memento was nowhere to be seen.

Gods help me, I thought wretchedly. All of this was like a bad fairy tale. Only in fairy tales the girl is gorgeous and blonde, and a prince comes to rescue her from the tower where the evil wizard holds her capture. But _he_'s not exactly evil....just mad. He's _got_ to be mad. Why else would he call me beautiful? And why ever would he think I was a god?

I gave up. There had to be a way out of here, one I could actually get through. I closed my hands, testing the pain in them, which was dull but persistent, and slithered out of the bed for the second time.

Surprisingly, the door opened to let me out, and lamp after lamp lit itself down the distance of the corridor. I shrugged into a dressing gown and left the room. Why, I wondered, would he have left the door unlocked? Presumably, even were I to leave the mansion, I would still not be able to pass the gates.

The light wasn't grey, I noticed. It was almost golden, a warm creamy yellow that seemed to heat as it threw illumination, like a fire does. The corridor was long and rather elegantly put together, with dark marble flooring and high vaulted ceilings stretching into the distance. Doors of polished wood opened off it at regular intervals. As I paused before one, it swung itself open.

It was a sitting-room. A roaring fire burned in the fireplace, the first sign of life I'd seen in this dead country. Row after row of leather-bound books lined the walls, and thick sheepskin rugs lay on the dark wood floors like islands of warmth. Almost without realizing it I wandered into the room, staring around myself, fascinated.

Something was tugging at my attention.

_"So she has finally come?"_

"I don't know. Is it really her?"

The voices were so faint I thought I had imagined them. They seemed to move around me. Oddly, I felt no fear; just curiosity, and a desire to know who they thought I was.

"Who's there?" I demanded.

_"She can hear us!"_

"It must be her. No one else of that realm can hear us. None but of his race."

"Who are you?"

_"Should we tell her?"_

"It can't hurt."

There was a small swirling of breeze around me, and the voice, closer now, whispered in my ear. _"We are mortals who chose to serve Hades rather than die. We keep this house. You must be the one we have waited for. What is your name?"_

"Persephone," I said without thinking. "I mean Kore. Kore is my name. What do you mean, you waited for me? Why am I here?"

"_Because he needs you,"_ said one of the other voices. _"Back in the beginning of the world Hades was created differently from his brothers and sisters, not complete as they are, which is why he was consigned to rule this gloomy realm. But if one of his race falls in love with him and agrees to stay with him in the underworld, spring and summer will come here. This place will be alive. We will be free."_

"Why do you think it's me? I have nothing to do with gods." I sat down on a sheepskin, aware of how soft and warm it was, how wonderful. The voices swirled around me impatiently.

_"Don't be silly, child. You are the daughter of gods, heir to gods. She never told you?"_

"Who?"

_"Your mother."_ There was a muffled conversation, and then the first voice, closer than ever, said _"Close your eyes."_

I did. There was a little breath of wind over my forehead, and suddenly I was swimming into memories more vivid than I had ever known. I was a baby, carried in my mother's arms through golden fields of wheat; around us there were tall golden people, beautiful, distant, smiling at me; I was four or five, walking with my mother through a pale marble temple, waving to the great white statue of Zeus, aware in some part of my mind that I had been there before....._"You see? You remember things. You are Zeus and Ceres's daughter, born before Zeus married Juno. You are Persephone. And Hades loves you so much that he is dying for you."_ The mental image suddenly shifted to a darkened room hung in white gauze, and the form of the pale man standing on a windswept balcony overlooking the forests of black poplars, leaning heavily on the balcony railing. As I watched, he swayed and clutched at the railing for support. _"His kingdom is dying with him. And with the kingdom dies a part of you, Persephone; you are linked to this place by blood. Understand who you are. Understand why you are here."_

I shook my head. "This is crazy. I want to go home."

_"You are home,"_ said one of the voices, softly, sadly. "_This is your home."_

Anger flickered through me again. "I can't believe this. Any of this. I'm not a god, I'm not holy, I'm just Kore, Ceriss's daughter, and I want to go home."

_"Ceres didn't tell her. None of them told her."_

"I know. I know. It's sad. But Ceres never wanted this, any more than he does. She is bitter still."

"What are we going to do?"

"I don't know what you're going to do," I said, "but I'm going to get out. Somehow."

_"Don't you see? You can't. There is no power save that of Zeus himself that can take you away from here. And...Persephone....he's dying. We've been watching him die."_

"That's his problem," I said acidly, and got up. "I will not be held captive by a crazy god, no matter how big his crush on me might be." I left the room, feeling the eddies of the wind trying to stop me, but my anger was like a fire inside my head and I could hardly see the walls, and I ran out of the room and down the corridor.

I wandered for what seemed like hours, lost. Lights turned themselves on for me, and doors opened at my touch. Every room I passed through seemed to have a banquet laid out on a satinwood table or a silver tray, and my hunger was getting worse and worse. Still, I couldn't forget that soundless thunderclap, and the voice in my skull. _If you eat of the food of this realm, you may never leave._

Well, really. It didn't look like I had much opportunity to leave anyway. I reached out for a cracker, setting aside mysterious voices in my head, and had almost taken a bite when an odd noise caught my attention. Putting the cracker down again, I tiptoed out of the room and down the hallway, following the noise. It was coming from a half-open door lost in grey gloom—down this corridor the lights had failed to burst into cheery flame at my approach—and I crept closer, curious to see if there might be someone else in this mansion who shared my captivity. Maybe together we'd be able to open those damned gates.

What I saw made me go cold all over. In the dusk of the curtained room, the pale man who had stolen me lay slumped on an ornate chaise-longue, coughing his lungs up. He sounded _awful_, worse than this one boy I'd known who had TB, and as I crept closer I could see that the handkerchief he was pressing to his mouth was stained with dark blood. _Looks like he was right. He's dying._

I couldn't help it; Mother had always told me to help people in need, and I'd been her assistant several times when she was called upon to act as a healer. _Besides,_ said a small nasty part of me, _if he dies, there's no guarantee you'll ever get out of here. _I hurried into the room and approached his couch, bent over him. Close up, he looked even worse, that weird white hair of his soaked with sweat and falling limply into his eyes; he was colorless except for those dark eyes and the blood on the handkerchief. The fit didn't seem to be letting up at all; he was gasping at the end of each run of coughs, a sharp breathless gasp, and immediately coughing back what little breath he could draw. I slid an arm around his shoulders and helped him sit up, leaning forward so his breath came easier, and rubbed his back. Gods, he was so _thin_, as if the wind flickering poplar leaves against the windows would blow him away, as if the coughing would shake him to pieces.

Holding him, I tried to remember what was good for a cough. Coltsfoot, and honey, I thought, and laudanum. I was never any good at memorizing the medicines, or the chemical distillates Mother made from them. Even if I had known something that would help, I didn't have the ingredients or the equipment to make it, and even then I'd no guarantee that it would do anything at all against whatever-it-was that he had. I merely held him while he coughed.

The whispers of wind were suddenly there around me again. "_She.......?"_

"She is holding him. Perhaps there is hope."

I turned, still rubbing his back. "I'm not changing my mind about any of this, so go away unless you've got something that will help."

_"Bossy."_

"Assertive. I like that." There was the sound of one wind-gust swirling away. I shrugged, ignoring them, and turned my attention back to the pale man. He seemed to be getting his coughing under control, finally. When the fit passed he lay back limply, and I stuffed a pillow behind his back and let him go. He lay there quietly, gasping, his eyes closed, and didn't protest as I took the handkerchief away and found a relatively blood-free section to wipe his lips with.

The wind danced back to me, this time bringing a small grey glass half-full of some black liquid. _"It is the only thing that helps him now,"_ it said. I sniffed at the liquid; it smelled odd, harsh and bitter, the way tears feel at the back of your throat. Still, I wasn't a healer, and presumably these disembodied voices knew their stuff.

What had he said I was to call him? "Aidon," I said softly. "Aidon, can you drink this?"

His eyes flickered open, and saw me, and knew me, and he began to cough again, awfully, a heavy retching cough. I cursed and held the handkerchief to his mouth, supporting him. The fit didn't last long this time, and as soon as his gasping had eased I held the glass to his lips. "Try and drink some," I said. "They say it helps you."

He managed to swallow some of the black stuff, and the change was remarkable; his breathing came slower and deeper, without the nasty crackling in it. Soon he opened his eyes again, and stared at me.

"Kore," he whispered.

I couldn't think of anything to say. _Are you all right_ sounded silly, and _Yes, it's me_ unnecessary. He gave me a wan smile, and murmured "This is more than I deserve."

"Yes, it probably is," I agreed, and got up, wrapping his fingers around the stem of the glass. The utter desolation in that porcelain face at my withdrawal was really rather touching, although I still couldn't shake the thought that he was having me on. No one had ever implied that I would be worth that kind of obsession.

"I'm sorry," he said hoarsely. "That was a fairly disgusting display. You should never have had to see that."

I scowled at him. What did he think I was, some pampered brat who'd never seen blood? "No trouble," I told him, and folded my arms. "Still not going to let me go, huh?"

He coughed again helplessly and took another sip of the medicine. "I....." he said, and shook his head. "I can't."

"Can't don't want to, or can't are unable to?" I demanded.

He opened his great black eyes and looked up at me. "Right now........I am unable to. I don't have the strength."

"But you will have?"

"If you stay with me a little, yes," he said quietly.

"And then you'll let me go, so this will happen to you again? Right." I shoved my bandaged hands in my pockets. "Hope your cough gets better, Lord Hades." Without another look I turned on my heel and stalked out of the room.


	6. 6

            "_It is not she. We were mistaken."_

_            "How could we be mistaken? It has been so long…and she is one of them, she is Ceres's child, the ones the stories spoke of."_

_            "It doesn't matter now. He cannot live much longer."_

_            "I cannot believe this is the end."_

            I woke up stiff all over and cold, and found myself slumped in the windowseat of the great grey prison-room Aidon had brought me to. The voices had let me go, before, when I had left him alone and in pain in his black room, and I had had considerable difficulty finding my way back here, but had made it at last; I didn't remember going to sleep in the windowseat, nor yet crying, but my eyes were puffed and scratchy and the salt of tears was dry on my cheeks.

            I wondered if he was dead yet, and if I would know if he died. More than ever I wanted my mother and our warm rough little house, wanted to be embraced and comforted and told that yes, all this was a horrid dream, and it was over now. But the bandages on my hands and the tearstains on my cheeks precluded that, and the empty gnawing in my stomach made me realize I'd have to eat soon, or I would be ill.

            It's funny how when you're hungry you have really heightened senses of smell and of taste. The whole room was redolent of pomegranates, that strange sweet acidic smell that seemed to fill my head all the time now, and I couldn't help sucking on my fingers as I thought of the red juice, the jewel-clear flesh of the fruit, the rich vault of seeds studding the inside of its leathery skin…

            I slid off the windowseat and nearly fell, dizzy and lightheaded as if I'd lost blood. I couldn't help it; the pomegranate was a great deal more powerful than I was, and damned be all the mental thunderclaps and the whispering voices in the world. I had never wanted anything in my whole life as badly as I wanted that fruit, and I would have it.

            My hands were trembling as I peeled away the cerise skin, exposing the seeds; I fell to my knees and buried my face in the eviscerated fruit, gobbling, totally bestial, unable to control myself. The taste of pomegranates filled the world, and all the stories I'd ever heard about ambrosia and nectar fell away like ashes under the onslaught of that magnificent, baroque, scarlet flavor. There was nothing besides me and the fruit, and when it was gone, flesh sucked away from every seed, leaving just the dry husk of the skin behind, I curled up and began to cry.

            Aidon lay like alabaster in his high black bed, eyes shut, face and throat sheened with sweat. The pillows were spotted with his strange dark blood. Only twice had he roused since Kore had left him, muttering things about bright gold and summer days and tawny ears of wheat, and the gusts of wind that flickered the lamps and stirred the curtains of his bedchamber moved slowly now, sadly,  as he fell farther away from them. Even the rain outside the windows had ceased to fall now. Parts of the palace were beginning to crumble; the balustrade on the terrace below had all but rotted to dust. Rain pattered in the corridors.

            _"What will become of us?"_

_            "We will join the others. We will be nothing, as he is nothing, as his realm decays."_

_            "Is there no hope, then?"_

            In the bed, the dying god gave a strange half-strangled gasp, and both of the servants returned to his side. _"What is it? What's happened?"_

_            "Can't you feel it? How the air has changed? She has eaten of the fruit of Hades. She is his now."_

_            "It is too late."_

_            "No," _said the other voice. _"She has condemned herself to remain here. Whether or not she saves him is up to her, but there may still be a chance."_

            Aidon suddenly began to cough again, a dreadful choking sound. _"Go and get her. Perhaps she may ease him."_

And then there was only the gentle ripple of air in the chamber as the remaining servant hurried to fetch the black medicine.

            I cried for a long time, I think; long enough for my tears to run almost dry. I had no idea how long I'd been there, curled on the floor with the husk of the pomegranate empty and crumpled in my hand, when I slowly became aware of someone prodding me.

            I rolled over: there was no one in the room but me, yet someone's fingers were prodding my shoulder, ungently, urgently.  I'd been in Aidon's grey hall long enough to know that things like this weren't particularly out of the ordinary; rather than shrieking and gibbering in fright, I wiped the drying salt from my cheeks and scowled into the empty air of the room. "What is it?" I demanded.

            _"He needs you,"_ said a disembodied voice. I recognized it as one of Aidon's invisible servants. _"He needs you, Persephone."_

            "My name is Kore," I said, but wearily: I had the idea this was not an argument I could win. The dream of Mother's house in its rough warmth was receding; it was only with some effort that I could remember how it had been there, what it had smelled like in the low kitchen, with its drying herbs above the ancient iron range.

            _"Kore, then_,_" _said the voice. _"Whatever you want to be called, he needs you, girl. Can you truly be selfish enough to leave him dying now? He has given his all for you. All that he is."_

            "I didn't _ask_ for it," I said, beginning to be angry again. "I didn't want him to, what, fall in love with me? Become obsessed with me? I didn't want any of this, can't you understand that, I didn't _want_ this!"

            _"I know,"_ said the voice. _"I do know, Kore. But you are his only hope. If not for him, then for his realm, for all of us....come to him."_

            I sighed and got up. The disembodied voice had a point: it wasn't just him that suffered now, but his entire kingdom. Some part of me—the part that _could_ remember Mother's house, and the taste of the water from our garden pump, and the feel of rough linen sheets rather than dove-grey silk—said _What kingdom, what realm, this is all a horrid nightmare, he's not a god...there are no gods..._

_            And if there are not,_ said the rest of me, _so what? It won't hurt me to help him._

            Already, with the flesh of the pomegranate, my strength was returning; the shivering and the lightheadedness were fading, and I was beginning to feel like a human again, rather than a frail and sickly collection of bones. I followed the wisp of wind that was the disembodied voice down Aidon's hallways and through Aidon's staterooms, aware of the crumbling of the walls and the drip of rainwater from the damaged ceilings, of the slow and certain disintegration of the palaces.

            The voice led me down the one hallway where the lamps did not light themselves at my approach, and the dark door swung open on a room lit only by the grey light from two great windows. In the dimness I could just make out a high, dark bed, hung with charcoal velvet, and a pale form lying in it, very still.

            The wind fluttered around me and away, and the two great candelabrae on the bedside tables sprang into life. The flames burned with a blue edge, as if the air was bad; they flickered, then grew stronger, and I was left alone with Aidon.

            I sighed, licking the last of the pomegranate's juice from my fingers, and went over to the bed. He was lying propped up on pillows, and I noticed with distant alarm that the pale silk was spotted with what must have been blood—it looked like dark wine. I reached out for his wrist, for a moment frightened that the voice had waited too long before bringing me; but I felt a faint thready pulse beneath my fingers, and as I watched his great black eyes opened, and met mine.

            "Kore," he rasped. "You.....you came to me."

            "Your servants brought me," I said, and wondered what the hell else I could say. His hand, too hot, curled around mine.

            "Kore....I can't keep you here." He struggled to suppress a cough. "I...was wrong to steal you, I know that. And I know that...that you hate me, and that you can never be happy here..."

            "I—" I began,  but he cut me off, tightening his hand on mine.

            "I will take you home," he said. "I just...need some strength, Kore. I will...." He broke off, gasping in a deep breath, and doubled over in another hideous coughing fit; more of the dark blood spattered over the sheets. I cursed and snatched a handkerchief from the table, held it for him, my arm around his shoulders; as soon as my fingers touched him, the coughing seemed to ease, as if my touch itself had some sort of power for him. Slowly the fit eased to gasping, and I wiped away the blood from his mouth.

            "I'm sorry," he choked. "I'm disgusting."

            "You're not disgusting," I snapped, letting him lie back against the pillows. "You're just stupid. Here." I handed him a glass of the black medicine that seemed to help him; he sighed and sipped it. "You've made yourself ill over me, and while I find it quite incomprehensible that anyone should make themselves even slightly headachy over me, I feel sort of responsible." I swallowed, hardly aware of what I was about to say, or why I was about to say it. "And I...oh, hell, I hate seeing _anyone_ like this, let alone someone like you..."

            It was true, I knew, as I said it, and I let my hair fall forward to hide my face. He was beautiful. I had been denying it since I woke up in his big grey-silk bed; at the time, I'd hated him enough not to care what he looked like, although I had been aware of his beauty nevertheless. There was something undeniably effective about the combination of his black eyes and snowy hair, and his voice...always slightly rasping...had silver tones deep within it, like the song of dark bells beyond a veil of rain.

            He was staring at me. I could feel his gaze through the fall of my hair;  a moment later pale fingers crept up and pulled the hair aside, gently, and he looked up into my face. A little colour had come back to him; he wasn't grey so much as white now, and the black eyes seemed less shadowed. "Kore," he said, in a whisper.

            "No," I said. "Stop it. I don't want you to say anything." I wiped silvery sweat from his forehead. His eyes closed slowly, reopened, and he nodded against my hand.

            I did for him what I could, what I remembered from Mother's teaching; the invisible servants brought me whatever I asked for, and I managed not to think too hard about what I was doing. That night, and the next, and the next, I spend in his chambers, sleeping on the couch in fits and starts, waking whenever one of the dreadful coughing fits seized him, lying beside him on the bed until he could drift off again. Slowly he regained some strength, and after four days he was able to get out of bed for a few hours.

            We sat on the grey balcony outside his room, he wrapped in blankets against the faint chill, me in a long silvery gown I'd found in the wardrobe of my room; my own clothes seemed...wrong, here, rough, indelicate. I was standing against the balustrade, fingering the grey stone. There were veins of silver in it that gleamed dully as the clouds passed over his pale sun.

            "Kore," he said. "Why are you doing this?"

            "What do you mean?" I looked over my shoulder; he was plucking fretfully at his blankets, not meeting my gaze.

            "Why are you here with me? Why have you stayed with me and dealt with my thoroughly unpleasant indisposition? You could just as well have stayed away, Kore. Stayed in your rooms and waited for it to be over."

            I sighed and turned around, lifted myself to perch on the parapet. "What would have happened to me if I did? If you...died? Would I have managed to escape your kingdom before it completely disintegrated?"

            He coughed a little, muffling it in his handkerchief. "I don't know. Probably."

            "And even if I had," I said, "what then? How would I get home? Your realm doesn't seem to have a lot to do with my world." I paused. "And...hells, do you really think I'm that heartless? Yeah, fine, you kidnapped me, you stole me from my own world, my life, my mother...but you could've done a lot worse, Aidon."

            He looked up at me, his black eyes unreadable. "I expected you to rape me," I resumed, and then cursed as he started to cough; it passed quickly, though, and his handkerchief remained free of blood. "I...well, you didn't do me any harm, besides stealing me. And you seem to have been punished fairly effectively." I remembered the last few nights, the desperate struggle to breathe, the terrible choking cough, the fever that had risen, and risen, and finally broken. "Think of it this way; once you get well, you can take me home."

            Aidon didn't meet my gaze. "You..." he began, and cleared his throat. "You've eaten of my food, Kore."

            "Of course I have," I said. "I'm human, or at least I jolly feel human, and I can't subsist on air and vapours." I'd eaten fairly well the past few days, actually; the mental thunderclaps seemed to have given up, and my hunger superseded my trepidation.

            "Yes," he said, and looked away.

            "What is it?"

            "I...I'm sorry," he muttered. "The food of my realm...it..."

            "What are you talking about?" I demanded.

            "You can't leave, now," he said, in a rush. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

            "What do you _mean_ I can't leave?" I got off the parapet and stalked over to him. "What the hells do you mean?"

            Aidon coughed, looking away. "You're....bound to Hades, now. It is part of you."

            Crazy images flickered through my mind---could I throw it up? Could I rid myself of the contamination?—but I knew better. "So," I said, dully. "I'm stuck here."

            Aidon rubbed at the bridge of his long and patrician nose. "I'm sorry," he said again, sounding choked; I glanced at him, and cursed as he began to cough again, deep retching coughs that sounded as if they were tearing him apart.

            Later, when I'd got him back to bed and had rubbed his chest with my mother's astringent salve, he looked up at me with unfocused, brilliant eyes. "I'm sorry," he said, again. "Kore...I wish I'd never done this. Never done any of this."

            "Hush," I told him. "Aidon, you have to rest."

            "I've hurt you," he insisted. "I've....I've done unthinkable things.....and Gaea help me, Kore...I do love you, so much..."

            Something inside me seemed to snap, with a sick little percussion like the breaking of an abscess.  Those astonishing eyes—huge, black eyes, fringed with dark lashes, set in a face the translucent white of alabaster—suddenly seemed to become the center of the world, for a moment: there was nothing else but Aidon, pale and lovely and astonishing Aidon; and without thinking too hard about what I was doing, I leaned down and kissed him, once, on the forehead.

            He gasped, as if my lips burned him; and indeed, there was a mark on his forehead, a pink spot where blood seemed to have come back to his white skin. As I watched,  the colour spread, lit his whole face with something like the bloom of health; he raised a wondering hand to his face, and then reached up and touched my cheek, and I let him draw me down to him, and our lips met.

            You must understand that I had never been kissed before, not really kissed,  not as a lover kisses his beloved; it was astonishing and frightening and brilliantly wonderful all at once. His lips were cold—cold enough to burn—and the shock of them touching me seemed to radiate outwards, spreading through my cheeks, through my scalp, making my hair try to stand on end despite its weight. His pale fingers slid into my hair; I found my own hands creeping around his shoulders, pulling him close to me as he pulled me close to him. The world shrank and dwindled to the brilliant candle-point of the contact between us, and I shut my eyes, and let that flame bear me away.


End file.
